In our country we do not realize the intimacy of a shepherd with his flock as they do in Syria and in parts of Southern Europe. It was my daily delight every day for many weeks and a dozen times a day, to watch a shepherd who had this almost incredibly close communion with his flock. Many times have I accompanied him through the green pastures and by the stream. If my shepherd wished to lead his sheep from one pasture to another, he went before them, and he was usually singing.

He led them with a song or with a sweet, low, wooing whistle like the call of a bird, and the sheep raised their heads from the herbage, looked at their guardian and guide, and followed on. I have heard his song and his low birdcall by the watercourse, and have seen the sheep follow his course over the rocky boulders to the still waters, where they have been refreshed. At noon he would sit down in a place of shadows, and all his flock crowded around him for rest. At night, when the darkness was falling, he gathered them into the fold.

We must realize an intimacy like this if we wish to understand the shepherd imagery of the Old Book. The communion is so intimate that the shepherd knows if one of his sheep is missing.

A man afraid of spiders spotted one in the laundry room of his West Seattle home. In order to get rid of it, he grabbed a lighter and a can of spray paint. There is no report about the fate of the spider, but the house caught fire, causing about $60,000 worth of damage. That is a lot to get rid of one spider.

Fear can make us act irrationally. We have fears that keep us from effectively serving the Lord, and the messes these fears get us into are often worse than what we were afraid of in the first place. “Fear not,” God says. “I am with you.”

Alan Sinclair does not want his death to be permanent. After he dies, his blood will be flushed from his body and replaced with antifreeze. Technicians will then cool the body with dry ice and fly it to a cryonics center in Michigan. The center will keep it at minus 320 degrees. When a solution is found for whatever kills him, future technicians will thaw him out. Cured Alan will exist on earth once more. His wife has already died and undergone the cryonics solution.

The Christian hope is that God will resurrect us from the dead, just as our Lord Jesus resurrected. In the newly resurrected state, we will need no cure because the main cause of death—sin—will have already been taken care of.

Salvation, Assurance of

Several years ago one of the astronauts who walked on the moon was interviewed and asked, “What do you think about as you stood on the moon and looked back at the earth?” The astronaut replied, “I remembered how the spacecraft was built by the lowest bidder.”

We as Christians can rejoice that the work of salvation did not go to the “lowest bidder” but was performed by an infinite God. There will never be a deficiency in his work. Our salvation is as sure as the architect of that salvation, Almighty God.

When the storms of life, the winds of trouble, and the sea of discomfort and emotional agony seem to overwhelm, we have to say with the songwriter, “Our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness. . . . We dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus’ name.”